- Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of Christ;
May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us."
The fourth and last document which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a
Latin "Hymn in praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall
(Secundinus) which begins thus:
"Audite, omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita
Viri in Christo beati Patrici Episcopi:
Quomodo bonum ob actum simulatur angelis,
Perfectamque propter uitam aequatur Apostolis."
The poem is given in full by Haddan & Stubbs, 324–327, and assigned to "before a.d. 448
(?)," in which year Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his mission,
according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440), and lasted till 493? The hymn
is first mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh."
The next oldest document is the Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned
to the latter part of the sixth century, (l.c. 356–361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of
St. Patrick; but it is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by
Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to St. Patrick are of later date
(Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.).
It is strange that St. Patrick is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he
often refers to Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology. He
is also ignored by Columba and by the Roman Catholic writers, until his mediaeval biographers
from the eighth to the twelfth century Romanized him, appealing not to his genuine Confession,
but to spurious documents and vague traditions. He is said to have converted all the Irish chieftains
and bards, even Ossian, the blind Homer of Scotland, who sang to him his long epic of Keltic heroes
and battles. He founded 365 or, according to others, 700 churches, and consecrated as many bishops,
and 3,000 priests (when the whole island had probably not more than two or three hundred thousand
inhabitants; for even in the reign of Elizabeth it did not exceed 600,000).^57 He changed the laws of
the kingdom, healed the blind, raised nine persons from death to life, and expelled all the snakes
and frogs from Ireland.^58 His memory is celebrated March 17, and is a day of great public processions
with the Irish Catholics in all parts of the world. His death is variously put in the year 455
(Tillemont), 464 or 465 (Butler, Killen), 493 (Ussher, Skene, Forbes, Haddan & Stubbs). Forbes
(Kalendars, p. 433) and Skene (Keltic Scotland, II. 427 sqq.) come to the conclusion that the legend
of St. Patrick in its present shape is not older than the ninth century, and dissolves into three
personages: Sen-Patrick, whose day in the Kalendar is the 24th of August; Palladius, "qui est
(^57) See Killen I. 76, note. Montalembert says, III. 118, note: "Irish narratives know scarcely any numerals but those of
three hundred and three thousand.
(^58) A witty Irishman, who rowed me (in 1875) over Lake Killarney, told me that St. Patrick put the last snake into an
iron box, and sunk it to the bottom of the lake, although he had solemnly promised to let the creature out. I asked him whether
it was not a sin to cheat a snake? "Not at all," was his quick reply, "he only paid him in the same coin; for the first snake cheated
the whole world." The same guide told me that Cromwell killed all the good people in Ireland, and let the bad ones live; and
when I objected that he must have made an exception with his ancestors, he politely replied: "No, my parents came from
America."